But 2008 has sucked on every level imaginable.
One
Leatherface and Starfish Ted
IT’S NO SURPRISE that I ended up working in an industry ruled by men. I always loved playing with the boys. I loved to get dirty, skin my knees, and catch frogs. I would rather have tossed a baseball with the three Callahan boys down the street than played hopscotch with my little sister, Cat, in the driveway. My parents laughed when I came home covered in mud, an interesting counterpoint to my quiet sister, who wanted nothing to do with any physical activity that didn’t involve a jump rope or thick colored chalk. At first, the Callahans didn’t mind having me around, and why would they? I was an easy opponent, someone who helped reinforce their developing, fragile male egos; until the day that I hit a home run, a soaring, fast, uncatchable hit to right field (otherwise known as the hedges that lined the Callahans’ front lawn). I ran the bases fast, my knobby knees knocking each other. When I hit home plate, marked by a kitchen towel, I jumped up and down savoring my victory, loving that I had managed to score against boys who were older, bigger, faster, and stronger. Benny Callahan, at ten, two years older than me and the strongest of the group, didn’t like it. In fact, like most boys (and later men), he hated that a girl had challenged him—and won.
“I don’t want to play with a stupid girl. Why don’t you go home and play with your dolls?”
“Don’t be such a sore loser!” I cried. It was my first lesson that success, small or large, comes with consequences.
“Go home! Your parents probably don’t even want you. That’s why you have a boy’s name. My mom told me your parents wish you were a boy.”
“That’s not true! Alex is a girl’s name!”
“Alexandra is a girl’s name. Alex is a boy’s name. Your parents don’t like you and neither do we!”
I had never thought about the fact that my name was just plain Alex, not Alexandra. Ouch.
“I hate you!” I yelled, the joy of my victory vanquished in a flash. I sprinted off as the last of the evening sun disappeared over the horizon, arriving just as my dad returned home from work.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked, as she hugged me. “Did you get hurt playing baseball?”
“No,” I sobbed, pulling out of her grasp. “Benny said that I have a boy’s name, and that you didn’t name me Alexandra because you wished I was a boy!” I wailed loudly, the way an eight-year-old does when faced with the reality that her parents don’t love her.
My father kneeled on the floor, as if somehow matching my size would better enable him to console me. “That’s not true,” he reassured me. “Your name is Alex because it’s unique, just like you. There will be a million Alexandras running around, but there’s only one Alex.”
“I don’t believe you!” I sobbed hysterically and ran out of the room. How was I going to live in this house until I graduated from high school with parents who didn’t want me? My parents found me in the living room, curled up in a ball on the couch.
“Hey, would you like to come to work with me tomorrow?” my dad asked.
“I can’t,” I said. “I have school.”
“Well, how about tomorrow you don’t go to school? Come to work with me instead, and we’ll spend the day together. Would you like that?”
I looked at Mom for confirmation that I could miss school and spend the day in New York City with my dad. She smiled and nodded.
“Really?” I asked my dad. Until then, all I knew of my father’s job was what I saw when I went with my mom to pick him up at the train station. I would sit in the backseat of the car and wait for the train to pull in. When it did, I’d watch dozens of men wearing suits, ties, and trench coats briskly exit the train and descend the stairs into the parking lot. A few women got off the train, too, wearing skirts and matching jackets. They carried soft leather briefcases and wore socks and sneakers with their skirts. They all looked so important. I couldn’t wait until the day I was able to ride the train with the grown-ups and carry a briefcase of my very own. Of course, I could do without the sneakers and the socks. I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “Can we take the train into the city? The one you take every day?”
“You bet. We can ride the train in the morning and you can come see where I work. Then we can go to lunch and to FAO Schwarz. How does that sound?”
Sounded good to me. Who needs the Callahan boys when you have new toys?
It became a ritual. My dad would take me to his office a few times a year, even before there was an official “Take Our Daughters to Work” Day. On days when the markets closed early and he wasn’t busy, he’d allow me to come see his office and watch grown-ups at work. We’d take the train from Connecticut to Grand Central Station, and then ride the subway downtown to Wall Street where he was a banker at Sterling Price. I’d sit at his desk in his office and play with all his computers. He had two different keyboards, more phone lines than I had friends to call, and I had access to unlimited candy and cookies from the cafeteria downstairs. From the first time I witnessed the glamour of the Wall Street machine, I was hooked. Downtown buzzed like no place I had ever been; it was and is the economic epicenter of the universe. Everyone walked with purpose: you never saw people casually strolling or window-shopping along the twisted streets south of Canal. Down there people were busy. Time was money, and money was all anyone thought about: how to make it, how to keep it, how to make sure someone else didn’t have more of it than you did. It was electrifying.
“Hurry up, Alex. You’ll get run over down here if you don’t pay attention!” My dad would wave for me to follow him, weaving in and out of the surging crowds as I tried to keep my eyes on his navy suit jacket. Men in the Financial District wore their pinstripes with pride and a swagger—they were the Yankees of Lower Manhattan. Everything and everyone I saw downtown looked expensive: men wearing fine Italian suits, silk Hermès ties, shiny leather shoes. The first time I saw the New York Stock Exchange in person it was like seeing the Parthenon. The American flag hung proudly from one of the many Ionic columns, the building stretching the length of an entire city block. I was only eight years old, but I already felt like I was part of something special. I felt sorry for the people who would never get close enough to know what they were missing, and so amazingly lucky that I wasn’t one of them. I decided to make sure that that never changed.
My father had no idea those days would alter the course of my life.
“The Business” was what my father and all the other Wall Street guys called the finance industry, as if there was no other profession on the face of the earth. And, to them, there wasn’t. The very first time I went to his office, I knew this was what I wanted to do. My parents always joked that I had a lot of energy, sometimes too much. My teachers commented that I talked too much in class, that I ran in the hallways, that I had to learn the difference between my “inside” and my “outside” voice. I always found it all difficult to do, no matter how hard I tried. I could never seem to harness my energy, and I worried that it was something that would end up being a problem for me when I grew up. But everyone ran in the hallways at Sterling Price. Furthermore, from what I could tell, there was no such thing as an inside voice, and all anyone seemed to do all day was talk on the phone or to each other. It was like a giant adult playground, where people could do everything I was always told not to do. It was fantastic! I felt like I had walked into a world where every quality that made me a difficult child was actually valued. I felt like it was where I belonged. From then on, working on “the Street” was the only dream I ever had—I never wanted to be a ballerina, an astronaut, or a teacher. I became the eight-year-old who wanted to work in finance—the quirky, precocious, “interesting” child. My teachers found me amusing. My mother figured I’d grow out of it. But there was no way that was going to happen. I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college, or even what kind of Trapper Keeper I wanted for fourth grade, but I knew what I wanted to do with my life. And once I set my mind on something,